Implementation details

The Sandman MCA has been implemented as a distributed system running over an implementation of CORBA. The DLAs are currently specified in the form of Tcl8.0 code. Experiments were also conducted with code specification in Java, but in our implementation the interaction between C and Tcl bytecode was slightly faster. Also, it is easier to quickly write and modify Tcl scripts (even on the fly) than Java programs. Even so, this is all just an implementation detail: there is no reason why the DLA should not consist of compiled C programs, so that there is no noticeable performance penalty to be paid when using loadable code.

The testbed consisted of a number of Sun UltraSparcs and ATM cameras, connected by Fore switches. The switches were partitioned and controlled using the switch dividers as described in section .